Messaging Server

Recommended Data Collection for Messaging Server Issues

When contacting Sun Support to obtain assistance with a Messaging Server issue, it is necessary to provide a detailed problem description and a minimum set of required data - directly below are some guidelines on these topics. It may also be necessary to collect additional data which is more specific to the problem - recommendations for which will follow in later sections.

Problem description

The problem description should be as detailed as possible and should try to address all of the following points.

• problem symptoms
• component of Messaging Server involved
• mail client name/version/platform (eg Thunderbird 2.0.0.22 on Windows XP) if applicable
• always reproducible?
• when did the problem start?
• any changes that coincided with problem start (patches, config, load, etc)?
• how frequently is the issue seen?

If the problem is reproducible then a detailed step-by-step procedure to recreate the problem should be provided to Support such that if the issue can be reproduced within Sun then data can be collected internally without recourse to requesting additional troubleshooting data from customers.

Required data

In addition to the detailed problem description, the following items of data are required in order to help problem reproduction and/or troubleshooting.

The output from the "imsimta version" command will provide the Operating System type and version and version of Messaging Server.

If something is restarting by itself or exiting abnormally, look for a core file.  If coreadm is not already setup, please do so (see http://msg.wikidoc.info/index.php/Core_Dumps).  If you find a core file, use the pkg_app script to gather the data needed to analyze the core file and send both the core file and the pkg_app data to Support.  The latest version of the pkg_app script is located at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/scripts/indexSjs.html
You can use the dbhang script to gather the most commonly needed configuration and log information.  On Messaging Server 7.0u2 and later systems, you can find a version in examples/unsupported/dbhang.  The lastest version can be found at http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/scripts/indexSjs.html   The dbhang script should be able to determine the location of your Messaging Server installation using pkginfo(1).  So you should be able to simply run it, as root.  In some circumstances you man need to use command line switches or modify the script to point it at the correct <server-root> or change other defaults.  But usually the defaults are sufficient.
To debug problems where msprobe finds a component to be unresponsive and therefore requesting a restart, dbhang can be run manually after the restart to gather log and configuration data, but what will be most useful is to use the sampe wrapper script included in the dbhang directory to cause msprobe to invoke dbhang when the problem is detected, but before the restart is attempted.